25/09/2026
I've been trying to find the words and strength to write this message over the last day or so, so here goes. On Wednesday 23rd September my Dad, Les, passed away.
As some of you may be aware, my Dad is one of our company directors and was heavily involved the early days helping me behind the scenes to turn Tiny Tots into what it is now. I was a naive 25 year old early years practitioner at heart with no business experience whatsoever, so we learnt a lot together and I learnt so much from him.
He spent his weekends renovating the playground, maintaining the nursery, and using up all of the tea bags in the process. He really loved it even if he did complain everytime I asked for something else. When he popped up in the day to fix things, the children loved to “help” and he would patiently let them even if he was desperate to get home for a nap.
Anyone that knows my dad, will know that he loved data and monitoring things. So he quickly changed the energy contracts and loved to send me the graphs of energy usage and reminding me to ask staff to “turn the bloody lights off when they go outside”, yet the staff got a much politer version of this request whenever he came up to the nursery.
I really don’t know what I would’ve done in the first few years without his advice and guidance, and I know the nursery wouldn’t be what it is today if it wasn’t for him.
Unfortunately over the last few years, his health deteriorated and he’s been unable to do as much as he could before, but has still been there to guide me in the right direction. Over the last few months he’s been in and out of hospital and despite knowing it might happen soon, we thought we’d have a few more months, if not years, with him.
As it happened much more suddenly than we could have ever expected we’re still trying to process it, as are some of the staff within the nursery that have worked closely with him over the last 11 years.
I’ll be taking some time off over the next few weeks to try and process everything, and support my mum, sister and brother. We just ask for your patience during this time as a lot of our team are also heartbroken.
As a number of the team members worked closely with my Dad, we want them to be able to attend his funeral. Therefore once we have a date for this, we will be in touch to let you know our plans for reduced capacity on that date.
Thank you for your patience during this time.
